Claim: A video shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy belly dancing.
Fact: The video is altered, perhaps using AI. The clip originally shows Pablo Acosta, a belly dancer from Argentina.
On 23 September, X user @TaraBull808 posted a video (archive) which shows the Ukrainian President belly dancing. “Zelensky pulling out all the stops to get the last bit of money before Trump is elected,” the user wrote.
The caption likely refers to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s public stance towards Zelenskyy. Earlier this week he criticised the Ukrainian president for securing funds from the US for its war against Russia: “Every time Zelensky comes to the United States he walks away with $100 billion, I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth.”
Trump said he would end the Russia-Ukraine war if he gets elected and has “praised Russia’s military record in historical conflicts.”
On the other hand, Zelenskyy has publicly said that if Donald Trump is re-elected as US president, working with him will be “hard work, but we are hard workers.”
This is not the first time Zelenskyy has been the target of anti-Ukrainian disinformation. In February 2024, DW debunked various claims targeting Zelenskyy- that he bought luxury yachts, and his wife spent nearly 1 million dollars to buy jewellery in New York.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the keyframes from the video and found that various fact-checking organisations have debunked the video since 2023.
Logically Facts debunked the video in question, of Zelenskyy performing a belly dance in a yellow dress in January 2024, as well as a video of the Ukrainian President performing an eastern dance in a red dress. According to the article, the video of Zelenskyy belly dancing in a yellow dress originally shows Pablo Acosta, a dance teacher from Argentina. “The videos were altered using AI,” the fact-check found.
Another fact-check by Anti-Disinformation Network for the Balkans from August 2023 included a link to the original video of Acosta, the first 10 seconds of which match the video in the claim. The article also added that the altered video showing the Ukrainian president is a part of the “narrative of personal attacks on Zelenskyy, which has been present for a long time, implying that a former showman cannot run a country as president.”
Fact-checks by abp LIVE in January 2024 and META.MK debunked a similar claim in January and August this year.
Moreover, the poor, pixelated quality of the video also suggests that the video was altered.
Virality
The original post garnered 5.6 million views on X and was liked 48K times.
It was shared on X here, here, here, here.
On Facebook from 2023 here.
Conclusion: The video is altered and does not show Zelenskyy belly dancing. It originally shows Pablo Acosta, a dance teacher from Argentina. Several fact-checking outlets also debunked the video when it surfaced in 2023, adding the video was likely edited using AI.
Background image in cover photo: La Tribune
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